Downtown Girl

Grit, beauty, and everything in between

A huge welcome to new subscribers, and since my subscriptions have more than doubled in the past month and as L.A. Woman approaches its first anniversary, a heartfelt hello, thank you, and ALL the happy feels to you, my readers! So grateful you’re here.

Also, given all the newcomers, some light housekeeping on what this is and isn’t.

The best welcome mat L.A. could offer.

L.A. Woman is not about anything remotely GOOP or Kardashian-esque, and I have zero clue about celebrity culture. Yes, Hollywood keeps folks employed here but L.A. is more complicated than that, which I try to show in my various profiles of various women ages 50 and up doing cool entrepreneurial, creative, community-focused things. A lovely driver in New Jersey recently asked me which celebrities I saw while grocery shopping or out running errands and I told him that in my six-plus years of living here, I have not seen a single celebrity. This remains true today. It’s not like Tom Cruise or Jennifer Aniston browse Trader Joe’s, and if they do, they probably look as ragged off-camera as the rest of us so I wouldn’t recognize them anyway. I do feel very L.A. when I bike the beach at a time of year when the rest of the country is shoveling snow, zipped up in winter gear. And along the beach I’ve got a sage connect named Ra because let’s get real: 2025 is gonna require a lotta sage! We will be smudging hard for quite some time. Ra’s around if you need him.

So, let’s say you get to LA LA Land and you want to see the things. Here’s the first thing I hope you see coming into LAX, perhaps the biggest steel and concrete donut woman or man has made. Hopefully, this will whet your appetite for all things Angeleno and disavow you of the notion that the less touristy parts of my beloved adopted city–many of them found in downtown known here as DTLA–are worth skipping. I think of Los Angeles as a working class town with beachside McMansions. The beachside McMansions already get too much air time. Let’s briefly unpack the other stuff.

This 32.5-foot giant steel-and-concrete pastry-thing greets you from the popular Randy’s Donuts, a beloved landmark and truthfully, the best welcome mat any city could offer. Randy’s is located in an L.A. neighborhood called Inglewood, a community near and dear to my heart because it’s next door and where I’ve worked teaching first-generation Spanish-speaking students English and history. It’s appropriate that people see Inglewood first and not some place like Beverly Hills, that this is the introduction before wheels touch the tarmac.

And you can see the sprawl as you fly in, donut or no donut. Los Angeles is kinda everywhere in every direction, and developers might’ve kept going if not for the Pacific Ocean or the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. We’ll never know. What’s unfortunate is that most people fly past downtown L.A., get dropped off at LAX, which is three miles from the ocean, and very few circle back to the actual city.

I get it.

Clifton’s Republic is a popular nightlife spot that first began as a cafeteria for laborers in downtown L.A.

Nothing about accessing downtown is convenient. There’s no direct anything anywhere–public transportation not being an L.A. strength, a problem that has been discussed by city officials since white dudes with big bucks started showing up here and is one they’re now scrambling to resolve to accommodate the 2028 Olympics. Downtown is 18 miles from the airport via the 105 and the 110, two frequently clogged freeways that will leave you rethinking your itinerary, and–at minimum–a $60 Uber ride. Why go downtown gritty when the golden grit along the Pacific is right there? Plus, all those rumors that downtown is sketchy and there’s no real downtown anyway–this isn’t New York, a city that specializes in convenience and density.

I’m here to tell you that amidst that cluster of glass and concrete that you fly by is a city rich with ambition, vision, and inspiring Art Deco and Renaissance Revival design; that there’s sound and color on every corner; that it’s beautiful, grimy, ornate and weird—like Rome or Paris but different, thick with shiny promise and sooty decay, especially after last month’s wildfires. I’ve always been a sucker for paradox, so I am frequently downtown, as I was this past weekend, and, like any good relationship, being present requires energy and time, or in this case, gasoline and patience.

Inside the Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway near Clifton’s.

First, Clifton’s Republic, where I spent a Friday night catching up with a friend, sipping sangria, listening to vinyl, and reminding myself that a massive faux redwood tree in the middle of a building not only seems appropriate but necessary. I recently wrote about Clifton’s Republic “comeback” for Westways magazine, and the delightful Atlas Obscura offers a two-hour walking tour that dives deep into the establishment’s history, and, quite frankly, why there’s so much weird shit packed into so many dark rooms and why it works: dioramas reminiscent of the Natural History Museum, multiple bars and dance floors, more sofa nooks than what seems legal. Part speak-easy, part menagerie, Clifton’s is the sole survivor of a chain of eateries owned by quirky restaurateur Clifford Clinton, with this particular eatery on Broadway being a “poor man’s lounge” or cafeteria serving laborers building up L.A. in the 1930s. Now, it’s everyone’s lounge and the menus are scheduled to make a comeback with current restaurant management promising to bring back Salisbury steak, Jell-O, and Thanksgiving food favorites, high-caloric foods meant to keep you dancing.

I can picture potential Jell-O shots at Clifton’s–this is a place where people like to get their groove on–however, I’m curious to see how the Salisbury steak will perform in a city obsessed with healthy eating and food trends. If a meat smoothie can get spotlight attention at Erewhon (which, by the way, I am very proud to say I have never stepped foot in), then perhaps a Salisbury steak at a cherished downtown hub has its shot, too. Clifton’s is also 371 feet from a favorite among favorite movie palaces (yes, they were called that back then), the Los Angeles Theatre, an opulent jewel with grandiosity masoned into every inch that was built (well, funded) by Charlie Chaplin to showcase the debut of his film “City Lights.” This theater is prominently featured in a piece I wrote for the London-based literary journal, Panorama: The Journal Of Travel, Place And Nature, in which I describe Chaplin’s ghost criticizing my outfit, an essay that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (competitive, but fingers crossed…announcements happen in May!). Lavish isn’t enough of an adjective in describing this place, but if the afterlife looks anything like the theater lobby, I’ll be happy.

That was Friday.

Then came Sunday.

A soda wall inside Grand Central Market

Grand Central Market on Broadway is a 10-minute walk from Clifton’s and a mere 177 feet from the stunning Million Dollar Theatre. Forget Erewhon anything. Grand Central Market is what you should do with your time when you have time. It first opened in 1917 and was then called the “Wonder Market,” which, thank goodness, someone changed that name! Surprisingly, Grand Central Market doesn’t look its age, but it’s a pro and edgy, as is anything that survives L.A. You can eat everything here: oysters, tacos, ice cream, chop suey, pupusas, pizza, pasta, eggs in who-knows-how-many-ways, burgers, barbecue, empanadas—I think you get the idea. Spend a morning, an afternoon, the entire day. Bring a date here. Bring someone’s grandma here. Bring someone’s grandma and her date here. Learn how Los Angeles smells, tastes, and sounds here among the vendors. Trust me, the vibe is WAY better than Erewhon, and I don’t need to go into Erewhon to know that because I drive by one and see who walks out. Also, if you’ve seen the almost 2017 Academy Award Best Picture LA LA Land, you might remember the romantic moment Mia and Sebstian shared sitting at Sarita’s Pupuseria (which I’ve done and you should, too).

Across from the vibrant Grand Central Market is the funicular Angels Flight, also featured in LA LA Land, and a bit older than the market by sixteen years. There’s nothing like an impromptu, round trip $2 ride on a cable car built in 1901 climbing a hill that feels like a shaky struggle but somehow it all works out. Story of life, right? We get there. At the top of the hill there’s a cluster of skyscrapers and a circle of park benches because one needs funicular breaks. So before heading back down, I spent an hour or so sitting on a city park bench doing very little except appreciating the moment. This wasn’t a Baywatch moment or a 90210 moment or even a LA LA Land moment. It was a quiet and cool and unscripted Sunday afternoon moment. I highly recommend these. Find a park bench somewhere and do nothing but watch the sky.

The view from Sunday afternoon’s park bench near the Angels Flight.

This is the Los Angeles I hope you get to see, and I’ve only covered a fraction of all that’s cool about downtown. More to come for sure. Meanwhile, know that we’re okay here in the City of Angels, that it rained hard last week, that we grocery shop without ash falling on our shoulders (or spotting celebrities buying green juice), that burned areas are being cleaned up and people are rebuilding in whatever ways they can. I’ve never witnessed so much community and the response here made me so proud to call L.A. home. All the love sent this way is greatly appreciated. It was scary, and everyone knows someone who lost too much. L.A. is good at many things, and one of them is starting over. We’ll be okay.